November 3, 2004

• Wound Up, Winding Down.  Wah, looked at the news this morning.  Actually, I looked at it at 3:33am, because something woke me up, and I tossed and turned for about an hour because of mental chatter and anxiety.  Only some of which was election-related.  I've had a very trying several days since Sunday morning, when I wound up having to do the time change for our system at work.  It's not like Windows, which will just update itself.  That would be very bad because of the systems it interfaces with.  We actually have to change the time and then wait an hour and keep the software down.  Well, we had complications and had to reboot, which in turn messed things up for the next day.  All told, I got about 4 hours sleep max.  Then the next night, I get a call at 2am from the Operations after-hours staff; several users are unable to access the system or weren't getting their reports.  One of the automated, batched jobs that we should have started yesterday when we brought the system back up hadn't run, and unfortunately this job runs our scheduled background jobs.  Two hours later, four in the morning, still sleep deprived and on fewer hours from the night before, and I finally took care of all the tickets operations had.  Then I called them and told then that I wouldn't be able to handle any more report issues until the next day, but if anyone had trouble accessing the system or couldn't register a patient, to call me again.  Fortunately, he didn't.

  
  

  What also sucked was that I was on call this weekend, a rotating obligation for which we get a pager that operations uses.  Apparently, they did try and call that first, and I keep my beeper under the pillow.  But apparently, I was deeply unconscious and didn't hear it.  Then operations started calling pretty much everyone, despite our escalation process -- ADT On Call, Me, My Boss, My Boss' Boss.  Well, the phone call woke me up. Apparently, he did try and call Don, who also didn't answer.  Hmm. 

  
  

  So another night's sleep shot to hell.  Fortunately, I took Monday off because of some leave time I had lying around that needed using before the 6th.  But I get a call from my boss waking me up at 9am, who saw the problem on the log and had no idea what to tell the teams or his boss.  He was talking into my answering machine as I slowly dragged myself to my phone, asking why he didn't get notified about this -- not to mention Operations did, in fact, try to call him.  I picked up the phone and was luckily too tired to snarl at him, and mentioned that I did, in fact, send him an email at four in the morning telling him everything he needed to know.  I didn't mention that others did in fact try to get a hold of him, or that he'd not been answering his cell lately when I've tried to call him with information that I think is important anyway, or the fact that I knew that he's nearly exhausted himself completely, between his move and his job.  He works way too much, rarely doing anything on his weekends but catching up to all the crap that he wasn't able to deal with during the week because he was in one meeting or another.  He's been beaten up pretty well by this job in the six years he's been there, and I am actually concerned about his health.  He finally is starting to be too.

  
  

  ANYway, so that was about the crappiest Halloween I've ever spent, and a day off for that matter, since I wound up just worrying about the shitstorm I'd have to deal with when I got back.

  
  

  And now, the election.  In a word:  Ugh.  It's times like this I'm genuinely thankful we've got a term limitation amendment.  I'm already fast-forwarding my head to 4 years in the future.  I don't hold high hopes for the provisional votes, though I'm glad Kerry's holding out, difficult as I know that will be for the country.  I can't say I'm too surprised.  I knew it was a real possibility.  Despite those that were sure there'd be a more clear victory this time, I just had a hunch that it would be another very close race, and that Bush still had the edge. My hunches have actually been pretty good, even in the last two elections.

  
  

  Bush will either continue his dubious, plodding path and finally reveal himself to the wider audience as the less-than-fabulous leader he is, or possibly he'll either start to do some things right or at least, possibly the best yet, start to do nothing at all, other than possibly clean up some of his messes.  I think we can surivive another four years.  I think.  But I'd hate to think that after another four years he will be lionized by the wider populace.  These next four years of Bush, if indeed we are forced to have them, will be a real test of the Republican platform for a long time.  Still in control of both Congress and the White House (and I do fear for the Supreme Court), everything that happens will be their own policies come to fruition.

  
  

  What I do fear is a War of the Fruitcakes, a rehash of the Cold War anxieties I grew up with in the 80's.  And now that pre-emptive strikes are loaded and on the table of nations (not merely terrorists), who will be next to use this loaded gun? I don't think it will be us, not for a long time, judging by Iraq and the fact that we've already stretched our military personnel to its limits.  But to other nations like Iran and North Korea, we're Public Enemy Number 1.  And I'm not sure deterrence works on those leaders.

  
  

  I'm hoping that's just my own lingering plutonic Cold War fears speaking (well, yes, they are anyway), but Bush did campaign on a platform of fear.  Consider me "stoked."

  • 11:36 am
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